Apiary Inspection - 14/08/2012

The weather was nice, Steph was at work, I wasn't and Lauren was at the child minders so the time was right to do my inspection. I went up to the allotment and had a walk over to the apiary where there were loads of Bees coming and going from 2 of my hives, and absolutely none coming from the other. The one that didn't have activity has been getting worse each time I've visited so I wasn't surprised to see no activity. The borage that is growing next to the apiay is doing extremely well, almost to the point where it is overtaking any weeds in the area! Below is the first video I took of my Bees foraging on borage.

Once I'd finished with my borage video I got suited up and entered the apiary and started working on my first hive; the hive with no Bees coming out of it. Once opened I was gutted, but not surprised, to find there were no Bees at all in the hive and all the stores were empty. Some of the comb had been damaged which probably means wasps have been and robbed the hive. There still were a few wasps  flying about trying to get a sugary treat. I moved as much of the hive out of the apiary with the wasps following me and placed it a short distance away to be delt with later.

The next hive was a lot better but still not perfect. There were plenty of Bees and brood, and I saw the Queen (Bee-atrix) but there is still an awful lot of comb that they just haven't drawn out yet. I believe this to be down to the bad weather we've had all year; it takes a lot of carbohydrates or sugars to make wax. I decided that I will heavily feed them from now to give them a better chance of building up before winter.

The last hive was very very similar to the last, the only differance was that there was slightly more stores and it was Queen Bee-linda who was on show. Again I will give them a good amount of feed before winter and again hope they survive. I didn't know what to do with the first hive I removed from the apiary that had all the drawn out comb in it. I finally decided to make my surviving hives bigger; now I have one hive with a double brood chamber and the other has 2 supers. This may have been the wrong thing to do but if I feed them lots from now hopefully they will fill out and occupy the new space. When everything was closed up I took another video of the borage forage which is below.

Apiary inspection 02/08/2011

This inspection both me and Steph went as my sister was babysitting. As Steph was a little more hands on with this inspection I'm letting her write the bulk of this post. I will be back at the end with the varroa count.

There's a change in author this week! I am very scared of bees, but I am facing my fear. Slowly, I am getting a little braver. I started off near to the closed hive without a suit, but standing very close to the apiary door so I could make a quick getaway should I panic. Next, I put my suit on and went right into the apiary while the hive was open, and Morley did the full inspection. And this time with a suit on I actually held a couple of frames! The rest of the time I play role of paparazzi to the bees. Apparently I'm doing a full inspection (under supervision) next time we can get a babysitter... So this is to prove that I listen to my other half and pay attention when he talks about his buzzing girls (and few boys)!

The roof of the hive and the two supers were removed to expose the Queen excluder, which can be seen above. The bees can be seen building foundation in the wrong place, and most of this was removed.

The first frame in the brood chamber to be examined; the damaged area is where the dummy board had stuck to the stores, and it looks like the bees set to repairing the damage immediately. There are capped stores to be seen at the top of the frame.

Me, inspecting a frame. It was heavy and covered in bees, and also had many cells of larva. It was the first time I'd been able to clearly see the babies. 

Me, relieved that I did it! It wasn't as bad as I expected. In fact it felt safer to hold the frame than stand next to the open hive with individuals buzzing around my head!

Handing over to the expert for the really busy centre frames. Next time...

A busy centre frame; Queen Beeatrix is in the middle to the left.

Me again! This time checking out a super frame. No problem after doing the one absolutley covered in bees before!

A super frame, almost fully capped, full of honey. It was extremely heavy! Thanks ladies :-) Can't wait to sample it!

 And now for the technical bit...

Thanks for that Steph. Also mention that I added a wasp trap to the allotment; this is basically a large jam jar with some diluted jam in, then a wasp size hole in the lid. Apparently this will trap lots of wasps without harming the bees. I'll try to get a photo of it for next time.

 When we got home I got onto counting the varroa mites within the debris. I found 21 mites which is 7 more than last week, however I am still not worried as the estimated amount in the hive is still well below the danger level. Also I have not seen any sign of varroa related disease.

Average Daily Mite Fall = 3.0 varroa mites
Estimated number of adult varroa mites in the colony = 120
Treatment is recommended in about 9 month(s) time (counting from day of first monitoring).

Apiary inspection 21/06/2011

Yesterday was my first apiary inspection. It was as quick as I could be as I didn't want to disturb the Bees too much. I was unsure how much of the foundation they would have drawn out into comb so I took the frames for the super box with me just in case they needed more room to expand.

Upon arriving at the apiary I got all my equipment out of the car, which included my hive tool, smoker, smoker fuel, wind proof lighter, a couple of frame spacers and a small box for collecting any brace comb that was removed. The smoker fuel I was using was rolled up cardboard which I made sure had no glue or anything on. I put the cardboard into the smoker and using the wind proof lighter got it a blaze then set it down for 5 minutes while I put my suit on.

When suited up I entered the Bee enclosure and puffed a little smoke over the front of the hive and then waited a few minutes to allow the smoke to calm the Bees. The next step was to remove the roof and check on the feeder bucket, which was empty; unfortunately I hadn't brought any more syrup with me so couldn't add any more.  

To access the hive I then used my hive tool to prise the crownboard away from the brood box; I was surprised at how quickly the Bees had glued it all together with propolis. Once inside the hive I puffed a little more smoke over the top to encourage the Bees to go down onto the frames then started taking out the frames to inspect. 

The underside of the crownboard with brace comb. This was scraped off and collected.

Freshly drawn out comb full of sugar syrup

The next comb removed, after the above pictured, had new eggs in but were too small to photo. By seeing eggs it told me I still had a laying Queen. I carefully replaced the frame and continued my inspection. On the 3rd frame with brood on I managed to find the Queen. She is marked with a spot of white paint and visible in the photo below. I have named my first Queen Beeatrix the first!

Can you see the Queen?

When I got to the last frame provided in the nucleus hive I attached a couple of frame spacers as the frames I have are self spacing Hoffman frames compared to normal frames from the nucleus. 

The new frame with spacer added to make it hang far enough away from it's neighbour

When I'd checked the frames I put the back together as quickly as I could. I noticed something in the hive that wasn't supposed to be there.....A wasp!

Wasp feeding from a bit of leaked sugar syrup. I crushed it so it didn't tell it's friends and return!